i

live in the future &

here’s how it
works
why your world, work, and brain are being
creatively disrupted

Nick Bilton

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 Copyright © 2010 by Nick Bilton

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Business, an imprint of
the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN BUSINESS is a trademark and CROWN and the Rising Sun

colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bilton, Nick.
I live in the future and here’s how it works / Nick Bilton.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Technological forecasting. 2. Technology—Social aspects. 3. Computers
and civilization. 4. Ubiquitous computing. I. Title.
T174.B53 2010
303.48'34—dc22 2010026870

ISBN 978-0-307-59111-1

Printed in the United States of America

Design by Lauren Dong

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

First Edition

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 for daniel l e

<
i 3 u

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 contents

author’s note ix

introduction
cancel my subscription 1

1.
bunnies, markets, and the bottom line
porn leads the way 19

2.
scribbling monks and comic books
it’s ok—you’ve survived this before 45

3.
your cognitive road map
anchoring communities 77

4.
suggestions and swarms
trusting computers and humans 103

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 viii contents

5.
when surgeons play video games
our changing brains 133

6.
me in the middle
the rise of me economics 161

7.
warning: danger zone ahead
multiple multitasking multitaskers 197

8.
what the future will look like
a prescription for change 227

epilogue
why they’re not coming back 263

acknowledgments 267
notes and sources 271
index 285

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 author’s note

Dear Reader,

This is not just a book but a unique reading experience.

Online, through a computer or smart phone, you can access
additional content for each chapter: videos, links to articles and
research, and interactive experiences that enable you to delve
deeper into the topics covered in that chapter, taking you beyond
the printed page.
At the beginning of each chapter you will see an image called
a QR Code, just like the one above. Using a free application you
can download from nickbilton.com you will be able to snap an image

Bilt_9780307591111_4p_01_r1.c.indd ix 7/30/10 2:34 PM

 x Nick Bilton

of these codes that will then take you to the additional content
directly on your mobile phone.
Become part of the I Li ve in the Future community by
commenting on chapters of interest and joining a continuing
discussion with me and your fellow readers online at nickbilton.com
and with the free I Li ve in the Future app for iPhone and iPad.

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 introduction
cancel my subscription

As you will see, I eat my own

dog food.

I used to love reading print newspapers. In 2004, when I

started working at the New York Times, I was excited beyond
words to discover that much of the Sunday Times was printed
ahead of time and a stack of those early-run papers arrived at
the Times building every Saturday. Not only did I work at one
of the most respected newspapers in the world, but along with
a paycheck, I also got the magazine, the Week in Review, the
Metro section, and Sunday Business several hours before the
rest of the world!
A new favorite ritual took root: I’d head to the office early
every Saturday afternoon, and when the first delivery trucks ar-
rived, I’d grab a few smudged copies and run home to immerse

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 2 Nick Bilton

myself in tomorrow’s newspaper. Before long, friends began

calling me to ask for advance copies of the real estate section or
the Sunday magazine.
Then, a couple of years later, I stopped my Saturday rou-
tine. The calls stopped too. One by one, my friends were
switching to new reading rituals, replacing the smell and feel
of the printed page with a quicker, personally edited, digital
reading experience. Even when the paper was free, they didn’t
want a copy anymore!
The same thing was happening to me. I had started reading
newspapers in high school and for years had stumbled every
morning to the doorstep, blurry-eyed and half asleep, to fetch
the morning paper. But now I was checking the headlines in
the morning on my computer, reading articles on my mobile
phone on the way to the office, and surfing news sites all day
long. Aided by social networks such as Facebook and Twitter
that helped pull together the best content at a vastly quicker
pace, I now could see news more quickly online. I also had
a much easier and more succinct way to share the articles I
found interesting while adding my own commentary, helping
to cull the best morsels of content for my friends, family, and
coworkers. In retrospect, I was going through a personal “digi-
tal metamorphosis”—something many of you will experience,
if you haven’t already. For some, it will happen over time as you
move one paper task after another to the computer, phone, or
digital reader. For others, it will happen quickly with the pur-
chase of a fancy new phone or new reader that suddenly opens
up a whole new world of electronic possibilities.
In my case, unread newspapers at home began to climb to
furniture-sized proportions by the front door, with the bottom

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 i live in the future & here’s how it works 3

layer turning a sickening shade of khaki yellow. My wife and I

simply referred to the growing tower as the Pile.
Eventually, as the yellowing newspapers continued to col-
lect, I decided it was time to take the plunge. I waited until
lunchtime to make the call, checking the sea of cubicles around
me to make sure nobody could hear me. I felt like a philander-
ing spouse, and the idea of being a cheater didn’t feel good.
I picked up the phone and called the Times circulation de-
partment. I even tried to disguise my voice in case someone
recognized me, adding a tinge of an accent and speaking a little
more slowly.
“Yes, I’m sure I want to cancel the delivery,” I told the rep.
“I’m sorry, I just don’t read it anymore.”
Of course, I love the New York Times. The stories are still
top notch, as good as they’ve ever been: perceptive, explor-
atory, thoughtful, and informative. The problem is that the ap-
proach just doesn’t make sense to me anymore. I understand
the concept—the printed paper is a neat package with a hun-
dred or so news articles, displayed by subject and order of im-
portance, culled by Times editors, my colleagues. Top stories
are here, business articles are there, sports is in the back of the
business section on most weekdays.
But that’s the problem: It’s only a collection of what editors
think is appropriate. And it doesn’t swirl in my preferences.
My likes and dislikes; it’s just not designed for me. More im-
portant, by the time those carefully chosen words on paper ar-
rive at my house, printed permanently on the page and selected
for a vast audience of readers, a lot of the content isn’t current.
A few years passed while I contentedly consumed the news
in my own way. I continued to do my work at the New York

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 4 Nick Bilton

Times Research Labs, helping the Old Gray Lady find her
place in mobile phones, on the computer screen, and in video,
and my workplace infidelity remained my own private busi-
ness. Then, in spring 2009, I appeared on a roster of speak-
ers for the geeky O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference
in San Jose, California, aimed at cutting-edge technology de-
velopers. A Wired magazine reporter attending the conference
asked for an interview.
Like a good corporate citizen, I checked with the Times
public relations folks to make sure the interview was OK. Once
they gave the go-ahead, I sat down with reporter Ryan Singel.
For over an hour, I showed Singel some of the prototypes
from the Times research labs, such as the inner workings of our
digital living room, where content can move seamlessly from
my computer to a phone and back to a big-screen television. I
showed him how videos on my computer of cookbook author
and “Minimalist” columnist Mark Bittman whipping up a dish
can appear instantly on my television while the recipe pops up
on my phone. Every device could be connected to the others,
and the stories I read on the computer could be illustrated with
maps or video interviews on the TV, computer, or phone. Some
day, I explained, sensors in the couch might alert the television
or the computer to turn to my favorite shows or sites, or sensors
in my phone might detect when I’m in the car and prompt in-
formation to be read aloud instead of displayed. For those who
still want to read on paper, newspaper boxes might print out a
personalized version—with customized advertising and even
the ability to notify a nearby Starbucks that I was headed in
for coffee.
I talked excitedly about some of our prototype mobile

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 i live in the future & here’s how it works 5

applications in which the news could change on the basis of

various scenarios. Imagine walking down a city block at lunch-
time while reading the Times on a smart phone; since the phone
knows it’s lunchtime, articles related to food and local restau-
rants could appear. I showed him prototypes and concepts of
flexible displays in which a bendable screen is constantly up-
dating the news and can be folded away like a piece of paper.
At the very end of the interview, as Singel was getting ready
to leave, he asked if I read the print paper. I was briefly unsure
how to answer. Should I lie? The decision had been made so
long ago that I hadn’t recently considered the consequences
of canceling my subscription. But it was now 2009, the age of
netbooks, iPhones, and Kindles. I decided to be honest: I told
him I mostly enjoyed reading the New York Times on my com-
puter, mobile phone, and e-reader.
A few hours later I gave my presentation, chatted with a few
interested attendees, and went back to my hotel room to dis-
cover my e-mail inbox crammed with messages. Some friends
and coworkers in the newsroom were congratulatory. “Hey,
Nick, great article on wired.com!” they wrote. “It’s really great
to see the NYTimes get so much digital credit.”
But others, from coworkers on the business side of the
company, had an ominous tone: “Holy shit, people here are
pissed!”
“The grown-ups are talking,” one said simply.
I was mystified about what I possibly could have said to
get the grown-ups talking, so I went to wired.com. Under the
headline “Times Techie Envisions the Future of News,” with a
nerdy picture of me smiling with my laptop, ran this:
“Nick Bilton, an editor in the New York Times research

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 6 Nick Bilton

and development lab, doesn’t think much of newspaper[s].

In fact, he doesn’t even get the Sunday paper delivered to
his house.
“Thankfully for Bilton and his employer, he’s bullish on
news.” Continuing, Singel added, referring to my feeling about
paper, not about the Times, “It’s just the paper he hates.”
After this opener, Singel gave a concise and overwhelm-
ingly positive overview of the work I showed him from our lab.
The article was supportive of our work and should have been
great coverage for a company aiming to show its shareholders
that it is truly a forward-thinking digital organization. Some of
my colleagues were thrilled that the story demonstrated how
the paper was focusing on the future.
But some of my coworkers and bosses were incensed that
I had publicly confessed to shunning the core product of the
Times. Some even believed that I might persuade other readers
to cancel their subscriptions as well.
When I returned to the New York office the next day, I was
immediately informed that I shouldn’t be telling the world that
I don’t read the print version. To quell some of the trauma, I
apologized for my remarks.
In all honesty, however, I was completely confused. Clearly,
I wasn’t the only person who had stopped reading the print
edition. In fact, what has happened nationwide in the last few
years is truly shocking: In 2008, paid newspaper circulation in
the United States fell to 49.1 million, the lowest number since
the late 1960s and well below the peak of 60 million reached
in the 1990s, when the Internet was just starting to come into
its own. The Times has suffered as well, with circulation slid-
ing in the 1990s, leveling off in the early part of the century,

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 i live in the future & here’s how it works 7

and then sliding some more. Daily circulation, which had been
close to 1.2 million in the early 1990s, was close to 1 million
at the time of my speech and would slip below the seven-figure
mark later in 2009.
Print circulation told only part of the story. With a deep and
painful recession accompanying a technological shift, advertis-
ers have abandoned print papers even faster than subscribers
have. Industrywide, revenue from print advertising has fallen
off a cliff, plunging to $24.8 billion in 2009 from $47.4 billion
in 2005, according to the Newspaper Association of America.
That’s a decline of nearly half in five years.
Newspapers are far from the only medium to face such ago-
nizing declines. The digital revolution is roiling just about every
form of media we know: Book sales in 2009 slipped to the low-
est level since 2004, according to the Association of American
Publishers. The Publishers Information Bureau reported that
although magazine subscriptions have grown slightly, advertis-
ing pages sold dropped more than 25 percent in 2009. Despite
the growing popularity of Blu-ray discs and a healthy box office,
DVD sales fell 8 percent in 2008. The music industry has been
hit hardest of all. Worldwide dollar sales have fallen every year
for a decade—and the bottom is nowhere to be found. In 2009,
CD sales fell more than 20 percent in both dollars and units. Al-
though digital downloads are up and now account for about 40
percent of music sold, the revenue they bring in doesn’t begin
to make up for the disappearing disk sales.
Given this revolutionary shift in how we read, listen, and
enjoy entertainment, shouldn’t the Times be asking why I pre-
fer digital to print and exploring how I consume my news?
Shouldn’t we be moving forward and not backward?

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 8 Nick Bilton

Imagine that you owned a restaurant and offered your em-

ployees free food, but they instead brought their own lunch
and dinner from home. Would you look the other way if plates
of freshly cooked pasta and garlic bread sat untouched on the
table? Hopefully not. If it were my restaurant, I’d want to know
why they weren’t enjoying my product, and I would do every-
thing I could to try to change that.
At Google they call this “dogfooding.” That is, if you make
dog food and the dogs won’t eat it, you might have a bit of a
problem. The people who built Gmail have to use it for their
e-mail service, and if something doesn’t work, they have to fix
it. Collectively, if Google engineers don’t like a service’s fea-
ture, they are supposed to change it accordingly—whether it’s
Google Search, Google Mobile, or any other Google product.
Along the same lines, if I wasn’t reading the print newspaper,
there was a reason.
Still, my published comments didn’t end with that slap
on the wrist. I heard from numerous people from numerous
departments numerous times. But at each turn I continued
to push at the issue. The conversation shouldn’t be about my
remarks in public, I insisted, but about my actions. I wanted
to point out that with regard to the new delivery methods and
the next generation’s consumer habits, the writing was on the
wall—or the screen, if you will.
I tried to explain that I—like many in my generation—
preferred the instantaneous digital experience because I could
share my favorite articles with others, adding comments and
joining a collective discussion while also viewing other read-
ers’ opinions. The print paper is static, and so is its narrative;
in comparison, a digital narrative can include invigorating in-

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 i live in the future & here’s how it works 9

teractive multimedia such as videos and slide shows. I also ex-

plained that people in my social networks and those I trusted
shared relevant content with me, and their remarks and news
gathering had become a critical filter for the stories I consumed.
It wasn’t about print versus digital; it was about immediacy, de-
tails, links, interactive graphics, videos, and, most important,
hyperpersonalization. The majority of news I consumed was
still from the Times. I just consumed it in a different way.
Although I didn’t want to be insolent, they needed to ac-
cept that and respond to it. My peers aren’t going to wake up
one day and crave newsprint. The world is shifting; ignoring it
won’t make it go away.
The whole experience was the least enjoyable—and most
anxious—of my six years at the Times. Thankfully, most of the
pressure subsided after a few weeks—although I’m pretty sure
there were some corporate suits who would have been happy
to see my exodus from the company with a box of my belong-
ings in hand. Luckily for me, and for the Times, this group is
in the minority, and the paper of record continues to push at
the forefront of the digital reshaping of news, aptly illustrated
by the fact that I worked in a research lab and am visible to
the public by the extraordinary journalism, innovation, and
cutting-edge digital content the Times puts out on a daily basis.
I should add here that if you still read the news on paper,
that’s perfectly OK. Paper is still gadget number one for read-
ing content; it’s disposable, relatively inexpensive, and rela-
tively simple to create in small or large quantities, and it doesn’t
need batteries or a power outlet. Admittedly, the online experi-
ence still isn’t better than that of paper, and it has a long way to
go until it is.

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 10 Nick Bilton

But paper alternatives are coming, and in some situations

they are already here. Technology companies are working to
make every aspect of our lives sync up with the digital world.
Global positioning systems are replacing maps, grocery cou-
pons appear on your phone, and the online phone directory
is far more efficient than your local phone book. Eventually,
a paper replacement for your daily news will come along too.
This book will help you understand what this all means and
how you can respond.

I Live in the Future

Granted, I’m a geek. I grew up playing the first video games

ever made, and I still get excited by anything with buttons or a
screen. I’m also hardwired for this wireless world. Call it ADD,
impatience, or an overactive imagination, but I’ve always found
it very tough to concentrate on just one topic.
My career path reflects this. I started out in the movie
industry designing film titles. Then I moved to packaging
design, where I created the initial mock-up for the first ever
Britney Spears doll. (Please don’t hold that against me—we all
do things we’re not proud of!) From packaging, I moved into
advertising, which quickly morphed into Web advertising and
Web programming. When the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, I
decided to become a documentary filmmaker. I entered a year-
long certificate program in journalism and documentary film at
New York University and then switched careers again, working
at smaller alternative weekly newspapers in New York, where I
learned the ropes.

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 i live in the future & here’s how it works 11

My first job at the Times was as the art director of the Busi-
ness and Circuits sections. Soon enough, my boss found out
that I could both write stories and write computer code, and
I was secretly assigned to a new digital reading collaboration
project between Microsoft and the Times. (The project, called
Times Reader, built a new kind of digital newspaper for tablet
computers.) From there, I moved into two new research and
technology-integration roles. For three years, I was the user
interface specialist and researcher in the research and develop-
ment department at the New York Times Company. The R&D
Labs, as they are called, focused on a variety of projects, in-
cluding building and prototyping mobile phone applications
and working with device manufacturers to try to influence the
boundaries of e-readers and the coming flexible screens. We
also wrote short “white papers” for the company, exploring
and explaining the implications of unlimited wireless Internet
or doing informed speculative research on upcoming technol-
ogies and how they will affect the way we create, consume, and
deliver content in the next few years. Our core mission in R&D
was looking into the future to try to forecast how the technol-
ogy and media worlds will work in the next two to ten years—
what gadgets we’ll use, the media we will consume, and what
advertising will accompany those channels.
Simultaneously, I worked in the newsroom as design inte-
gration editor, charged with rethinking how the print narra-
tive can morph and adapt to a digital form. More recently, I’ve
joined the business section writing staff as the lead blogger for
Bits, the paper’s technology blog.
When I looked at all the different jobs I’ve been involved
with over the last fifteen years—from advertising, writing,

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 12 Nick Bilton

and photography to video, programming, and user interface

design—I noticed one undeviating thread that ties it all to-
gether: storytelling.
All the pieces of my work—the photos, the words, the pack-
ages, the design, the programming code—all work hand-in-glove
to tell a story. In fact, many of you are storytellers too, using a va-
riety of media and marketing to sell your products, your political
candidates, or simply your best ideas. Everything we do, in one
form or another, is storytelling.
Just like me, the generation coming of age in this digital so-
ciety doesn’t see or perceive much difference in types of media.
Video? Words? Music? Computer code? It doesn’t matter.
The actual tools used are irrelevant. It’s the end result—the
storylines, the messages—that matters. This generation thinks
in pictures, words, and still and moving images and is comfort-
able mixing them all in the same space.
Even more, they don’t need professionals or professional
equipment to make it happen or direct it. With a computer and
an inexpensive camera, they can create and consume in short,
medium, and long forms. And if a form doesn’t exist, they can
create it. They are the new regime of storytellers.

You, Too, Will Be in the Future Soon Enough

It wasn’t so long ago that content of all kinds seemed to be

packed into big heavy bundles. You didn’t buy a great story;
you bought a magazine or a book. For the most part, you bought
albums, cassettes, or CDs, not single songs. Movies were an
evening’s entertainment. The only editing was done by profes-

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 i live in the future & here’s how it works 13

sionals, and distribution was handled by large companies with

skilled salespeople and deep marketing budgets. Everything
was sold at a markup, though in some cases advertising subsi-
dized the cost.
Not anymore. Today, driven by a surge in technological in-
novation, that model is caving in on all sides. Look at comput-
ers as an example: As memory, storage capacity, and screens
have become less expensive, the options have grown beyond
the wildest dreams of a quarter century ago. The byte—the
computer’s single unit of data—was grouped in mere thou-
sands in the 1980s to create games so basic that they were sim-
ply dots, lines, and equations. Today, video games are so real
that it’s hard to tell if you’re watching a movie or playing in a
virtual world.
The pricing of these technologies also tells a fascinating
story: In 1984, the 10-megabyte hard drive was a wide-eyed
wonder and considered a real deal at $4,495. By 2004, just
twenty years later, such a drive was completely obsolete, too
small to be used for modern computing tasks and not worth
the effort to make. Today, $100 will easily buy you more than
500 gigabytes of storage—50,000 times as much storage space
for a fraction of the price.
These kinds of stunning advances are driving many of the
changes that are upending just about every form of media we
know. Gradually, as the costs decrease, smart screens will begin
to replace everything else, becoming all-purpose displays for
TV shows, newspapers, blogs, Facebook status updates, fam-
ily photos, magazines, and books. Content companies won’t be
confined to any one purpose, and they will be able to create and
distribute virtually any kind of information or entertainment in

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 14 Nick Bilton

all sizes and shapes. In such a world of unlimited storytellers,

we will consume content in long and short forms, with words
and with pictures and in what I call bytes, snacks, and meals.
When this happens, what’s to stop CNN from creating an
investigative report and selling it as an instant book with em-
bedded video? Or Random House from selling a book with
video interviews that are updated over time? Without the need
for paper or disks, production and distribution costs will fall.
Everything will become content that can be customized, com-
bined, sliced, diced, pureed, and endlessly redistributed.
Some of this convergence is already apparent. CNN used
to be a twenty-four-hour news outlet shown only on TV. The
New York Times and the Wall Street Journal were simply news-
papers. But on the Internet today, they are surprisingly simi-
lar. CNN’s website has writers and editors, still photographs,
extensive text, interactive graphics, and, of course, traditional
videos. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal,
along with their traditional words, are offering embedded vid-
eos, interactive graphics, live interviews, and moving images.
Online, the lines between television and newspapers have
blurred—and soon the same will be said about books, mov-
ies, TV shows, and more. There is one more wrinkle: Amateur
content and professional content are beginning to exist in uni-
son, on the same devices with the same reach.
If all this makes your stomach feel uncomfortably queasy,
you have plenty of company. Change as wrenching and new
as this digital revolution in words and pictures is unsettling
at best, rattling your security and bringing deep anxieties to
the surface. It’s true that business models and our traditional
ways of thinking will have to change and that navigating that

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 i live in the future & here’s how it works 15

transition is difficult. But if it’s any comfort, the advent of the

printing press, trains, and television was similarly wrenching,
yet we’re much better off for having all of them.
If your main fear is that our ability to think deeply or focus
on a subject is going to be washed away by the torrent of new
information, relax. Even with this shift, long-form content isn’t
going to die. Kids may seem distracted, but they will play video
games for an average of three hours a day—which sounds like
long-form content to me. If they don’t read a whole book in
two days or stay with a television show, it isn’t because they
can’t concentrate. It’s because we haven’t adapted the storytell-
ing to fit their changing interests. They are consumnivores—
collectively rummaging, consuming, distributing, and regurgi-
tating content in byte-size, snack-size, and full-meal packages.
In this byte/snack/meal world, these consumnivores will
drive the stories, deciding how much they want and what the
format will be. If we want them to consume our stories, we’ll
have to harness a range of technologies to tell them well. If we
don’t, there are plenty of other options available for them to
consume—or, more likely, they will create their next meal with-
out us.

This Story

This book isn’t about a list of absolute formulas for bringing in

more revenue in a digital world. But for those of you wrestling
with that challenge (or simply wanting to understand it better),
this book will give you a new framework for looking at these
difficult issues and making sense of the radical trends that have

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 16 Nick Bilton

emerged in the last few years. I will take you deep into the con-
sumnivore’s new world, explaining how navigation, aggrega-
tion, and the narrative are changing.
To get a feel for the future as it exists now, we will go on
a swing through the California porn industry, which through
history has kept a step ahead of traditional outlets in trying
new ideas and experimenting with the latest innovations in
media. Then, to reassure you and put today’s changes into
perspective, we’ll take a walk through history to see how radi-
cal new developments time and again have prompted fear and
upheaval before proving their immense worth to society—and
why we’ll survive this sea change as well.
From there, I will lead us off the cliff into the shifting riv-
ers, starting with our changing communities. Social networks,
the openness of the Internet, and handy new devices are more
than new ways to share photos, offer opinions, or waste time.
As we struggle to make sense of the flood of information, gos-
sip, and data gushing from the World Wide Web, these devel-
oping networks are providing crucial anchors that help us find
our way. They help us determine what news and information
we will trust and what we will ignore. As these new commu-
nities evolve and develop, they are profoundly changing how
media outlets reach readers, how companies find customers,
and even how we find and nurture our friends.
From there, I’ll address the notion that our brains can’t
handle all this fast-paced stuff by diving into how these devel-
oping technologies are engaging our brains and how our brains
are adapting to the volume of information flying at them from all
directions. As part of that, I will take a closer look at one of the
more successful of the current storytelling genres, video games,

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 i live in the future & here’s how it works 17

answering—once and for all, I hope—whether they’re really bad

for the next generation. As we all start to seek more compelling
narratives and more engaging experiences, research in this field
helps illustrate what the future of storytelling might look like. I
will explore the needs of the next generation of consumers and
creators who are at once creating and seeking new forms of nar-
rative and immersive storytelling.
The next section can be summed up in one word: “me.”
The old role of media was to act as an intermediary between
people and their understanding of industry, politics, and sci-
ence. The job of media was to cull and curate for a broad
audience. But consumnivores come to news from a different
perspective: New technology has put each of them squarely on
his or her own map, and now they want news that is highly per-
sonalized, relevant, and meaningful specifically to them. They
are keenly aware that they and their friends no longer watch the
same television shows at the same time and no longer will read
the same newspapers or devour books in the same way. We are
demanding that the stories of tomorrow be tailored to an audi-
ence of one—me—requiring a new approach. From there, I’ll
take you through the ever-growing debate about our compel-
ling desire to multitask. We know we can’t safely text and drive
at the same time. But can the next generation of thinkers and
consumers really chat, text, and still get their work done too?
(The answer isn’t as black-and-white as we’ve been led to be-
lieve.)
Finally, I will show you how the whole experience of con-
suming news, magazines, books, music, and other media is
changing, and how the best morsels of information will stand
apart from the voluminous clutter. This is the part where the

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 18 Nick Bilton

old meets the new: Great storytelling, incisive reporting, and

thoughtful editing will still prevail—but they will need to be
presented to you and me in a different form to go beyond mere
information. The people we buy content from must create a
unique and meaningful experience for both communities and
individuals and accept the fact that they will coexist with the
amateur and the hyperpersonalized. I’ll even look ahead ten
years or more to see how today’s cyborgs and 3D printers can
show where we might be in a decade and help us navigate the
ever-exciting world of tomorrow.
Speaking of tomorrow, you may wonder why I’m writing
something as old-fashioned as a book to tell these stories about
the future. Actually, this book is much more than the words
you’re reading here. Online and on your Web-enabled mobile
phone, you will be able to mine a treasure trove of additional
content. Some chapters will contain links to videos, visually
walking you through research and new technologies. Other
sections will link to extra information, including research pa-
pers, related news articles, graphics, and images. Additionally,
as the Web allows today, you can go online to nickbilton.com
and add to the discussion of each chapter through your social
networks or with traditional comments.
As you will see, I eat my own dog food.

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 1
bunnies, markets, and the
bottom line
porn leads the way
Oh, we’re not going to wait [for the
technology to exist to create content].
We’re going to build it.
—Ollie Joone, co-founder of The Digital
Playground

I Did It for My Work. I Had To. Really!

Every second of every day, thirty thousand Americans type the

word “sex” into an online search engine and hit enter. At least
50 million of our fellow citizens have done it. I’ve done it for a
few minutes myself. Well, actually, for a number of hours.
There was a very good reason, though. I was doing re-
search. Truthfully.
I did that research because the porn industry, unlike al-
most any other business, constantly has to try new approaches
and new technologies to stay at least a couple of steps ahead
of the morality sheriffs. It also must find fresh ways to satisfy

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 20 Nick Bilton

the seemingly bottomless interests of its customers, who have

been all too happy to move from well-lit arcades, to darkened
movie theaters, to the privacy of televisions, to the very per-
sonal personal computer. As a result, the industry throughout
history has been an innovator—and, over the last century, an
early adopter of film, video, and the Internet.
So, I reasoned, the folks in the porn business should have
some unusual and valuable insights into this shifting world of
new technology, social networks, and free and paid content. To
see if that was true, I had to check it out.
Of course, this would require vast amounts of research—
hours upon hours of surfing the underbelly of the Web, look-
ing at the best and worst of the porn websites. Honestly, I was
trying to figure out who was making money online in this in-
dustry, though this intense exploration eliminated my ability
to write or research from my local coffee shop, the New York
Times offices, or any other public place. My wife, Danielle, was
a little dubious too, to say the least. Eventually, she stopped
asking what I was doing when stark nudity emanated from my
computer screen and, at least for a time, tolerated my inquisi-
tiveness.
It’s a good thing she was patient. It took a little longer than
expected to get to the heart of the industry. Although looking
at pictures of naked people online is relatively easy, finding the
real revenue in the industry that creates those pictures can be
relatively difficult. Most adult companies are privately held,
and though they revel in nudity, they keep their own financial
matters well under wraps.
Thanks to the help of Lux Alptraum, a journalist and the

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 i live in the future & here’s how it works 21

editor of the industry website Fleshbot.com (which, by the

way, you should not investigate from your work cubicle), I
was able to make contact with several players of various sizes
in this under-the-covers industry. (Alptraum, who is spritely
and in her late twenties, is always excited to talk about sex,
porn, and the changing, blurring landscape of both topics. She
understands the adult industry better than most journalists
who cover it since she has been on both sides of the camera.
Before she started writing about sex, she founded and ran a
website called That Strange Girl, which was the first AltPorn
site. AltPorn, she explains, is a form of online porn that shows
“unconventional” models. Rather than the blond-haired per-
fect beauties you expect to see in glossy magazines, these sites
feature people who look more like someone you would see on
the street.)
As my quest continued, I made plans to head out to Cal-
ifornia, home of the film industry and most of the American
pornography business. The industry has thrived in the Golden
State for two reasons: First, there seems to be a lot of “talent,”
partially because of the traditional movie industry. Second,
California has a lax legal climate compared with other states,
where people who videotape sex can be charged with any
number of illegal acts, including pimping.
California wasn’t always lenient. In 1988, the state ac-
cused Harold Freeman, a porn creator, of being a pimp as part
of an effort to clean up and shut down the porn industry. In
California v. Freeman, the state likened the act of taping and
selling porn to that of prostitutes selling sex on the streets.
The case lasted several years and made trips to both the state

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 epilogue
why they’re not coming back

Dear CEO, Publisher, Producer, Editor, Author, Journalist,

Advertising Director, Filmmaker . . .

They’re not coming back.

Traditional consumers aren’t coming back. Print advertising
isn’t coming back. Media, brands, and the established narratives
aren’t coming back. And almost everyone will eventually make this
transition.
I’m not going to wake up one day and say, “Hey, the Web isn’t
for me; I’m going to start buying CDs, print books, and newspapers
again.” I’m among the new era of consumers and contributors, and
we’re looking for new forms of content and storytelling. Where it

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 264 Nick Bilton

doesn’t exist, we’re going to find it elsewhere, make it ourselves,

or, in some instances, just take it.
I’m not alone in this thinking. I know part of you hopes that
these changes are going to stop or at least plateau. But they’re
not. This isn’t just a temporary bump in the road. This is society
changing before your very eyes. Just as the printing press helped
cement and form imagined communities that became nations, the
Internet is doing the same thing, changing our concept of location,
trust, space, time, and connections.
Sure, the irrational economy has affected the speed with which
this has all happened; it’s forced us to push fast forward on the
demise of the DVD player, newspapers, cable television, and most
things analog. But I can assure you, they’re not coming back.
Before you panic any further, be assured that first and foremost
we’re all driving off this cliff together. The entire business of
storytelling—music, movies, television, newspapers, books, public
relations, advertising, teaching—every business will be affected. We
are all going through the same involuntary mutation. Some of us
have already left solid ground, and others are heading toward the
impending ledge. But one thing is for sure: We’re all going over that
cliff. What happens at the bottom of the ravine is what we get to
decide, and for some of the luckier ones the lessons of others will
help us prepare.
You see, when you take it down to its core, we’re all just
storytellers. Whether you’re writing a book or a news article, selling
an outfit or a car, writing a blog post about your weekend or a
press release about a new product, you’re telling a story. Whether
it’s 140 characters long, the length of this book, a video, interactive,
3-D, or an in-person narrative, it’s a story.
In the past stories cost money and were told by people with

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 i live in the future & here’s how it works 265

access to a printing press or television studio, but now everyone has

the ability to spread and share information equally. With inexpensive
tools at our disposal, with our mobile phones, digital cameras, and
laptops, we all have an equal voice. A short mobile video clip of a
riot in Chicago, uploaded to YouTube by a passerby, sits alongside a
video from a multimillion-dollar television network like CNN. A tweet
sent by a student in Iran can reach the same number of people as a
message sent out by the New York Times.
In addition, the anchoring communities all of us are creating—
our social networks—help ensure that each message is filtered and
shared with equal importance and fairness and reaches each of us in
an individual way.
The consumers who aren’t coming back are scurrying like ants
in every direction possible, and you’re probably wondering where
they’re going. They’re searching. Searching for new forms of
storytelling that we haven’t offered yet. The bottom of the ravine,
the new medium, affords a new narrative—just like in the early
days of television, when the producers didn’t know what to do with
cameras and motion and started filming radio shows. The business of
storytelling is doing the same thing with the Internet. We’re taking
our existing content and simply aggregating it to the Web; we’re
filming radio shows.
As unsettling as it may sound, we need to accept that we
are not simply selling content. We’re not selling the words on the
page or the images on the screen; instead we’re selling an entire
experience. The content we create and sell is just one segment of a
thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle.
As we move to the next iteration of storytelling, as a great
flattening is taking place between consumer and creator, the medium
will no longer be the message. The medium will be pervasive. The

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 266 Nick Bilton

message will be amateur, professional, and infinite. And it will all

exist as a mutual collection of bytes, snacks, and meals.
Society has entered an interregnum, and what appears on the
other side is not being decided by corporations and media giants.
Consumers will have equal sway in the discussion. We need to
harness this learning and help explore the future together. And
as the opportunities arise to pick ourselves up and dust ourselves
off—as they will—we need to understand how to evolve, how to
communicate and tell stories again.
As distribution channels become extinct and irrelevant and
the ubiquity of new devices gives way to truly amalgamated
communications, the new commodities will be length, aggregation,
immediacy, and niche.
It’s not enough to sit idly by, ignoring and quieting the employee
inside your company who doesn’t buy CDs anymore, or canceled her
cable television, or started playing video games instead of reading a
book, or stopped buying the print edition of the newspaper. These
people are trying to tell you about the future and how it works. It’s
up to you to listen.
It’s time to reorganize, rethink, and get back to the business of
storytelling.

Sincerely,
Nick Bilton

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 To purchase a copy of
I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works
visit one of these online retailers:

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